


Seven Reasons Not to Say Goodbye

by AdAbolendam



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Attempted Suicide mentioned, Canon Compliant Pairings, Character Study, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Grief, Hope, Romantic Friendship, Spoilers Through "Principia", impending character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-04 23:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14031495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdAbolendam/pseuds/AdAbolendam
Summary: Daisy jerked away from his outstretched hand.“Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay,” she said. “Why, Coulson? Why don’t you even want to try to get better? Why do you want to leave us?”Coulson may have come to terms with his death, but six conversations with his teammates (and one surprise) make him reconsider his position.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rocky, angsty journey, but it's going somewhere hopeful! I promise!

Phil Coulson died on May 4th of 2012.  
  
Nine days later, he was brought back to life with a head full of false memories and a sense that there was something wrong with him. The visions of the fabricated tropical paradise faded when he learned the truth. The dread lingered.  
  
He had cheated death and was living on borrowed time.  
  
Each day after the Battle of New York was a gift and he treated it accordingly, spending every moment of his second life building a better world. Nick Fury and Project TAHITI had given him a chance to be the man he always wanted to be, to have the life and the family he had never dreamed he could have.  
  
But he knew it was temporary.  
  
Coulson had lived in the world for 47 years before his first death. He had seen enough to know that nothing good lasts forever. For nearly five years, the knowledge that his bill would come due was a fear that was never far from his mind. It was like an electric current that ran under his skin, shaping every action and thought, working its way into his nightmares and daydreams.  
  
When the Ghost Rider told him the price he would have to pay to take AIDA down, Coulson did not hesitate. All of the dread and anxiety that had weighted him down since his resurrection was burned away when the Rider left him.  
  
There would be no more wondering about what would finish the job that Loki’s sceptre had started.  
  
It was almost over.  
  
He had enough time to fight one last battle and see that his team would be safe without him. It was more than he had any right to hope for.  
  
After AIDA was gone and they all gathered in the ruins of the base that had been their home, Daisy stood up and stepped into his traditional role as a leader. She convinced Fitz and the rest of the team that whatever faced them in the future, they would fight it together. Coulson grinned with pride as the others voiced their agreement.  
  
He had led them well and would leave them in good hands.  
  
When the time came, they would be alright, secure in the future he had built for them.  
  
He could finally be at peace.  
  
But he was not dead yet.  
  
And the journey to the final rest he craved and feared would be plagued with hurtles he could have never have seen coming. The destruction of the world and the threat of an eternity stuck in an endless loop of time were minor inconveniences in the end. The deepest scars were caused by the people who loved him, and who refused to let him go.


	2. Daisy

_“Agents Johnson and May:_  
  
_Attached to this transmission is a copy of all of the files I’ve been able to uncover on the Deathlok Program. It’s not much and it’s pretty useless without the scientists who created it, but I’ll keep looking._  
  
_I’ll be in touch when I have good news._  
  
\-- _Candyman”_  
  
Coulson’s frown deepened as he scrolled through the attached files from Tony Caine’s message.  
  
“Not much” equated to everything he and May had unearthed at the CyberTek facility four years ago. There were no additions to the notes since the fall of Hydra, but Coulson had heard Caine’s assertion that the scientists who had been offered refuge under Project Paperclip 2.0 had not stopped their research. There would be more data to come. Data he had explicitly ordered Daisy and May _not_ to look for.  
  
“Hey Coulson, what are you doing up this early?”  
  
He dragged his eyes from the smartpad in his hands and turned to Daisy wearing a grim expression that brought her up short.  
  
“What?” She asked.  
  
“I told you to drop this Deathlok lead,” he said, turning the pad so she could read the message.  
  
Daisy’s eyes lost their early-morning haziness in an instant and she stared back at him defiantly.  
  
“I know,” she replied. She took the pad from him without glancing at it and held it to her chest. “But you also said you wanted me to lead. Consider this an executive decision.”  
  
“Not on this!” Coulson snapped. “I’m not dead yet and you do _not_ get to make unilateral calls about my life!”  
  
“It wasn’t unilateral,” she said flatly. “May agrees with me.”  
  
Coulson stood to face her.  
  
“And what’s your plan, Daisy?” He asked. “You get this intel from Cybertek and then what? Are you going to strap me down? Knock me out? Subject me to invasive medical procedures without my consent?”  
  
“Why not?” Daisy shot back. “You’ve done it to me! More than once! I’m grateful for the lengths you went to to save my life after Quinn shot me. But at the Lighthouse? I did not consent to have you shoot me with an ICER and drag me back to a time and place where I am a threat to the survival of life on this planet!”  
  
“That’s different and you know it!”  
  
“How?”  
  
“You were making a mistake!”  
  
“So are you!” She shouted.  
  
Coulson reached out to the metal desk beside him to steady himself. He knew that she would take this the hardest of all of them, but she was wasting time worrying about him. There were more important things at stake.  
  
“Daisy,” he started levelly. “I am not making a mistake. This is something that has been a long time coming. I have accepted it and I need you—you have to let me go.”  
  
She shook her head and looked away from him. Coulson watched with growing apprehension as she swallowed and sniffed, fighting to keep her composure.  
  
“Daisy—  
  
“Why?” She asked.  
  
“Why what?”  
  
“Why do I have to let you go?” She clarified through clenched teeth. “You’d never let me go. You’d never let any of us…”  
  
A sob broke in her throat and she let the smartpad drop to the desk. Coulson winced, seeing her wipe her cheeks with the back of her hand.  
  
It was not supposed to be like this.  
  
She was not supposed to hurt like this.  
  
Daisy had suffered enough tragedy in her young life. He never wanted to be the cause of any more pain.  
  
If he had just managed to keep it together for a little while longer, no one would have had to know about the deal he had made until his time was up. Daisy would not be suffering like this. She would be focusing on their real mission. She should be worried about the big picture, not grieving over one person who could not be saved.  
  
“Daisy, please,” he tried, reaching out to her.  
  
“Don’t.”  
  
She jerked away from his outstretched hand.  
  
“Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay,” she said. “Why, Coulson? Why don’t you even want to try to get better? Why do you want to leave us?”  
  
A stab of pain shot through him and he bit the inside of his cheek.  
  
Daisy’s gift of perception was one of the skills that he admired most about her. It made her an empathetic teammate and an effective combatant. Now she was using that gift to hit the pressure points that would hurt him the most.  
  
“I don’t—  
  
“Mack and Yo-Yo?” Daisy persisted. “They have every reason to cut ties and leave us for good, but they are staying, fighting with us. Don’t think that’s not because of you. Fitz and Simmons? You _married_ them three days ago! They are starting a life together and you’re not going to see any of it! May? How the hell can you leave her alone, Coulson? You love her!”  
  
Blood rose to his face and he took a breath to calm himself before he answered.  
  
He was not going to take the bait. For all of her skills and experience, there were some areas where Daisy was still very much a child. Some part of her believed that everyone deserved some fairy tale happy ending. But Daisy did not have the luxury of naivety anymore. She had to grow up.  
  
“May will be fine without me,” he said evenly. “She always has been.”  
  
Daisy’s eyes grew wide with disbelief.  
  
“Like she was all of those years hiding behind a desk, afraid to go out in the field?” She asked.  
  
“She’ll be fine,” he repeated. “She’s not the same person she was back then. Neither are you.”  
  
Daisy pressed her lips together and sighed, but said nothing.  
  
“You are all going to be fine,” Coulson insisted. “You may not believe me now, but you will be okay without me, Daisy. You are strong, smart, and capable. You don’t… you don’t need me anymore.”  
  
She had to understand on some level that he was right. Even if she did not fully realize it today, she would eventually. He had taught her everything that he could.  
  
For children to finally grow up, they had to leave their parents behind and stand on their own without a safety net. Maybe that’s why he had been given the time that he had, to help her become the woman she was today. So she could stand on her own. Without him.  
  
Seconds ticked by and still, she had not said a word. Coulson took her silence as a sign that she was considering his perspective. With nothing more to say, he turned away and started toward the door, leaving her alone with her thoughts.  
  
“I might not need you anymore,” Daisy said to his turned back. “But I’ll always want you here. Always. And you can’t convince me that there’s anything wrong with that.”  
  
Tears burned his eyes. He blinked them back before turning back to face her.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” He agreed. “I’ll always want to be here for you. And I’m so sorry I can’t be.”  
  
Daisy sniffed and nodded.  
  
“Me too,” she said. “But you’re still here and I’m not going to stop looking for ways to keep you here as long as I can. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do, but you can’t make me give up on you. You didn’t train me to quit on anyone. I’m not making an exception for you.”  
  
He could not argue with her on that point.  
  
She was the perfect student and had learned everything he had to teach her. In the end, it was he who failed her.  
  
He had never taught her how to let go.


	3. Mack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching his teammates brood always brings out Mack’s philosophical side.

“So, Caine got in touch again,” Mack said, by way of greeting.  
  
When he sat down on the couch, Coulson found himself struggling not to fall into his lap when the ancient springs gave way under Mack’s weight.  
  
“He gave us a lead on a couple of the scientists that worked in the Deathlok Program,” Mack continued, unperturbed. He popped the cap off of a bottle of beer.  
  
“FitzSimmons and May are flying out tonight to bring them in. See if they can do anything to help you.”  
  
“I know,” Coulson said.  
  
He stared at the table in front of them, trying to bring into focus the empty bottle collection that he had started three hours earlier.  
  
“How many of those have you had?” Mack asked, pointing to the table.  
  
“Not enough,” he answered.  
  
Anger, frustration, betrayal. He could still feel all of it. When the alcohol took that away from him, he could call it a night.  
  
“They’re wasting their time,” he said.  
  
Mack grinned and shook his head.  
  
“It’s not a waste of time, Sir. You wouldn’t think so if it was any one of us.”  
  
“You know,” Coulson said, turning to him. “If I had known how often that was going to be thrown back in my face, I might have left more of you in mortal danger.”  
  
“No, you wouldn’t,” Mack returned easily.  
  
Coulson reached for a half-finished bottle of IPA and swallowed another mouthful, feeling nothing but a sour burning in his stomach to distract him from his resentment.  
  
“Can I ask you something?”  
  
“Would it make a difference if I said no?” Mack answered.  
  
“I’m not that drunk.”  
  
“Says you,” Mack muttered. “What is it, Boss?”  
  
“Is it so wrong to just ask to go out on my own terms?” Coulson asked. “It’s my life, isn’t it? Why don’t I get any say in any of this?”  
  
“Oh no. I’m not going there.” Mack said, leaning back on the sofa. “It’s rhetorical. And it’s the wrong question.”  
  
Coulson scoffed.  
  
“Okay, so what’s the right question?”  
  
“I think a good start would be, ‘why don’t they want to let you die?’”  
  
Coulson rolled the bottle between his palms and let out a sigh.  
  
“I already know the answer to that,” he said.  
  
“Do you?” Mack asked, sitting up. Coulson leaned back a bit, startled by his proximity and the serious change in tone.  
  
“You know, when I found out about Daisy and May’s plan, I didn’t shoot it down. And I’m not stopping them from flying out of here tonight. I’m not any hurry for you to shuffle off any time soon. You know why?”  
  
“I don’t know, Mack,” Coulson said, playing along. His stomach was starting to hurt and this conversation was the opposite of cathartic. If Mack had a point to make, he had about two minutes to get to it before Coulson left to pass out in his bunk.  
  
“You were raised in the Church, right?” Mack asked.  
  
Oh boy.  
  
This was taking a direction he was not ready for.  
  
“Yeah…” He hedged. “But Mack, I gotta tell you, I don’t really believe in that stuff anymore. Something about getting speared in the chest by a Norse god kinda put the final nail in that coffin.”  
  
Mack chuckled.  
  
“So if this is about where I end up after I die…”  
  
“It’s not,” Mack interrupted. “All I’m saying is whatever faith it is you’re raised in, all of those stories, traditions, values… they stay with you.”  
  
“What are you getting at?”  
  
The beer must have been doing its job. He had no idea where this line of thought was heading.  
  
“Coulson, it doesn’t take a minister to see that you’ve got a Messianic streak a mile wide,” Mack deadpanned.  
  
If his butt had not been sandwiched between two cushions, Coulson would have fallen off the couch.  
  
“What?” He asked. “What, you think I see myself as some sort of savior?”  
  
“Don’t you?”  
  
“Not…that’s not what… no… I mean…” Coulson stuttered.  
  
That could not be right. He did not think so much of himself. He just liked to help people.  
  
_“Even if it means giving your life to save theirs,”_ a treacherous voice in his head whispered.  
  
“Of course not,” Mack agreed ironically. “You just plucked up a bunch of broken or persecuted people, gave them a new purpose, and then made a deal with the devil to protect them that cost you your life.”  
  
“The Ghost Rider is not the devil,” Coulson interjected.  
  
“His skull bursts into flames and he kills murderers and rapists with a hellfire chain,” Mack said. “He’s as close to the devil as we’re likely to see on earth.”  
  
“And it’s not the first time, either,” Mack continued. “You’re always the one who rushes in like you’ve got a death wish, risking your life to protect us. I’m not just talking about the Battle of New York. Daisy’s father in Puerto Rico, that portal to Maveth in England, even in the Framework. I mean, there’s being noble, and then there’s suicidal.”  
  
“I’m not suicidal.”  
  
“No,” Mack said. “You’re just convinced everyone else’s life is more important than yours.”  
  
“Mack, I had my shot and I died. Everything since then has been icing, but it’s not going to last. It’s just temporary. And if my death protects the team and saves SHIELD, then it’s worth it to me.”  
  
His head was swimming and he had no idea if he was making sense anymore.  
  
Why was he even having this conversation? What the hell was the point? He knew he was doing the right thing. It should not have mattered if no one else agreed or even understood.  
  
Mack took a sip from his bottle and stared ahead neutrally, giving Coulson time to collect himself.  
  
“Why is it so important that you die for SHIELD?” He asked at last.  
  
“Because,” he answered, looking up through bloodshot eyes. “It’s all I have.”  
  
“Yeah,” Mack said. “And that’s why it’s wrong.”  
  
Coulson felt the room tilt to the side. He wanted nothing more than for Mack to stop talking, but he could not make him. He could not even stop himself from listening.  
  
“You’ll die to save us, but you won’t listen to us when it matters the most. When you took that deal, you stopped seeing us as the people we all really are. We’re not your friends or your family anymore. We’re just a concept, an idea. Like SHIELD. Like you.”  
  
“That’s not true,” He whispered.  
  
“Then why don’t we get a say in what happens to you?” Mack replied.  
  
_“Because you don’t understand!”_ He wanted to yell.  
  
None of them just could see the bigger picture. He could. He was just a small piece of this puzzle. _They_ were the ones that really mattered.  
  
“Alright, look. You want to know the reason I’m not ready to give up on you?” Mack asked. “You’re my friend. And I don’t think you’re done here. You’ve lived two lives and you still have more to do, more to learn about yourself. There’s more to you than an organization. You need time to figure out what that is.”


	4. Yo-Yo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson wakes to a hangover and Yo-Yo makes a critical decision.

For the first time in six months, the growing pain in Coulson’s chest did not wake him in the morning. Instead, it was the small beam of light that crept under his doorway, slicing through his closed eyelids like a lance that stirred him from sleep.  
  
“Ugh.”  
  
The pounding in his temples crescendoed to a full-blown timpani solo when he rolled over to bury his face in the pillow.  
  
What on earth had made him think that downing a full pack of microbrew was a good idea?  
  
That was the last time he sent Deke out on a grocery run. The only damn thing there was to drink in the Lighthouse was IPA and Zima. Deke was hoarding the stuff by the gross.  
  
“Coffee,” he muttered into his pillow. “Please, Deke, please tell me you got coffee.”  
  
As he walked barefoot down the hall, eyes still squinting against the fluorescent glare of the overheads, the smell of brewing coffee coming from the kitchen made every sinew in his body relax instinctively. He poured himself a cup blindly and had his face half-buried in his mug before he realized he was not alone.  
  
“Rough night, Coulson?”  
  
Coulson whirled around, coffee in hand, wincing at the figure perched at the bar.  
  
“Morning Yo-Yo,” he greeted. “I guess Mack filled you in.”  
  
“He didn’t need to,” Yo-Yo said, around bites of toast. “Who do you think got you to bed?”  
  
“I assumed it was him.”  
  
Yo-Yo’s mouth curled into a smile and she shook her head.  
  
“He wanted me to test out the new arms,” she explained.  
  
Coulson blinked away the fuzziness in his vision and watched her flex the new prosthetics that ended mid-bicep.  
  
“You carried me?” He asked in disbelief.  
  
“Well, mostly,” she qualified. “There was some dragging at the end. You wouldn’t stay still.”  
  
Coulson snorted and walked over to join her at the bar.  
  
“Wow,” he commented. “Super-speed and super-strength.”  
  
“Jealous?” She asked with a quirk of her eyebrow.  
  
“No.”  
  
He took a drink of his coffee, relishing the burn on the back of his throat.  
  
“Maybe,” he amended. “A little.”  
  
“Well, you could always ask Mack to take a little more off of your left arm,” Yo-Yo suggested. “I’m sure Fitz would be happy to fix you up with the latest model.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
The two sat in companionable silence as Yo-Yo finished her breakfast and Coulson steadied his breathing. As long as he kept his breaths even, the throbbing in his skull stayed at a manageable level of excruciating.  
  
“I wanted to thank you for that,” Yo-Yo said after swallowing her last piece of toast.  
  
He must have missed something.  
  
“For what exactly?”  
  
“You were right about the arms. It takes some getting used to. And I—I hate that I can’t feel anything that I touch. But it’s not terrible. Maybe it can even make me better.”  
  
Coulson smiled grimly.  
  
“You don’t get used to it overnight, but we are lucky we have someone like Fitz watching our backs.”  
  
“And I’m lucky I have you,” Yo-Yo said. “Someone who understands.”  
  
His eyes fell back to the steaming liquid in his mug.  
  
_“Don’t get used to that, Elena,”_ he thought.  
  
“Did—did Mack tell you…”  
  
“He told me enough,” she finished for him. “Mack has this idea. He thinks you see yourself as a… um, how is it he said? _Un mártir._ ”  
  
“A martyr?” Coulson asked. “Nice. He told me ‘messiah,’ but I guess that was the kinder interpretation.”  
  
Yo-Yo grinned and took a sip of her own coffee.  
  
“What do you think?” He could not resist asking.  
  
She shrugged.  
  
“I think you are a good man who did a good thing because you thought it was right,” she said simply. “Anything else you think about yourself or us… well, I understand you have your reasons. It can’t be easy.”  
  
“It’s not,” Coulson admitted. “I wish no one knew.”  
  
“Me too,” Yo-Yo said. “There are many things I wish that I did not know.”  
  
The sadness that had stolen over her in the hospital bed had crept back into her eyes. She had more than enough reasons to feel hopeless. They all did. But Elena had always been successful at keeping despair at bay, either through joy or defiance. Now, it seemed like the darkness was creeping inside of her in increments.  
  
“What else do you wish you didn’t know, Elena?”  
  
“When we were at the Lighthouse with Kasius, I saw things, heard things. Things that I couldn’t believe would happen. But they did,” she said.  
  
The pounding in his head dissipated as he hung on her words.  
  
“I knew I would lose my arms, Coulson. Just like I knew you were dying.”  
  
That was news to him.  
  
“What? How?”  
  
“Someone told me,” she answered. “Someone I had a reason to believe. She told me other things that haven’t happened yet.”  
  
“What things? Anything that can help us break the loop?”  
  
Yo-Yo considered him for a long stretch. She seemed to be searching for something, but what it was, he had no idea.  
  
“No,” she replied at last, with a soft smile. “The woman I met, she had lost her faith. I haven’t. Not yet.”  
  
“Okay,” he said, not sure what he was agreeing with. “You know if there’s anything you want to talk about—  
  
“I know. I know you’ll listen,” she said. “But I think that if we believe in each other, trust our team, then maybe the things she told me won’t come true. I have to believe that.”  
  
Coulson stared down as she reached for his hand clumsily with her prosthetic fingers. With his remaining, natural hand, he could feel what she no longer could: the assurance that came from a touch.  
  
“I trust you, Coulson. And I want you to be with us for as long as you can.”  
  
He found that it was almost painful to meet her eyes.  
  
She was hiding something from him. This simple gesture was costing her more than he understood, but he knew enough to realize that her faith in him was not easily given. And he could not give her the assurance that she wanted.  
  
“I know you don’t like it,” Yo-Yo conceded. “Everyone wanting you to stay. But we do. You couldn’t make us a team and protect us, then just expect us to let you go without a fight.”  
  
“I guess not,” Coulson said. “I just thought it would be easier.”  
  
Yo-Yo released her hold on his hand and wrapped her arms around her body.  
  
“I think we passed ‘easy’ a long time ago.”


	5. May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shared memory from their past gives Coulson some perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Warning for mentions of attempted suicide.*

Coulson lingered in the kitchen longer than usual that morning. He took his time going back to his room to get dressed for the day. But after a good hour of procrastinating, he knew he had to make an appearance in the de facto control room. There was work to be done.  
  
Real work.  
  
Hale was not letting up in her search to find them and bring them to whatever passed for her twisted interpretation of justice. The gravitonium patch on the rift in the basement was still unstable. And whatever wheels had put this time loop into motion where still spinning. In short, they did not have time to waste on chasing dead-end leads that would prolong his inevitable demise.  
  
But FitzSimmons and May had met with the ex-Cybertek scientists last night while he was drinking himself into oblivion, and there would be no way that they would continue with their work without at least briefing him on what they had learned.  
  
With his jaw set and the pounding in his head slowly abating, Coulson marched down the hallway to the control room and narrowly avoided colliding with May.  
  
His vision was still impaired from the night before and she appeared no more than a dark shadow in the corridor beside the room she had claimed as her own.  
  
“Sorry,” he muttered, after halting inches behind her turned back.  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
She looked a little worse for the wear herself.  
  
“You getting a late start too?” He asked.  
  
“Yeah,” she replied, leaning against her closed door. “We couldn’t persuade the Cybertek lackies to come back to the base. FitzSimmons questioned them all night. We only got back a few hours ago.”  
  
Coulson was tired, hungover, and in no mood for a fight, but he could not help the irritation that twisted his mouth. Half the team was going to be as good as useless today because they could not let the whole matter drop.  
  
“We’ll be fine,” May snapped, sensing his disapproval.  
  
“You haven’t slept,” he countered.  
  
“Neither did you, by the looks of it.”  
  
“I… rough night,” he demurred, rubbing his forehead.  
  
May gave him a critical once-over.  
  
“Were you worried that we wouldn’t find anything, or worried that we would?”  
  
“Did you find out anything?”  
  
“Does it matter?” She sighed. “You won’t consent to any medical treatment. It’s a waste of time.”  
  
Coulson’s hands curled in frustration.  
  
“That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time!” He said. “Why do you keep pushing this if you know it’s a dead end?”  
  
“Because I keep hoping that you’ll snap out of it and realize what a selfish hypocrite you’re being!”  
  
Anger cleared his blurred vision and his chest ached from the labored pumping of his dying heart.  
  
“May—  
  
He reached past her and opened the door to her room, indicating they should go inside with an impatient jerk of his head.  
  
May followed him and slammed the door behind her.  
  
“I have been getting this crap from every side,” Coulson said. “Daisy is guilt-tripping me for feeding into her abandonment complex—  
  
“Which you are,” May replied.  
  
“Mack thinks the only reason I’m doing this is because I’m trying to be a hero—  
  
“He’s not wrong.”  
  
“And Yo-Yo…”  
  
“What?”  
  
Coulson thought back to their exchange in the kitchen and the look of quiet determination in her eyes. He shook his head.  
  
“Actually, I have no idea _what_ that was,” he admitted.  
  
May crossed her arms, looking unimpressed.  
  
“I get why they don’t agree with my decision,” he continued. “But I expected _you_ , of all people, to understand.”  
  
“Why the hell would you think that?”  
  
“Because you were there!” He exploded. “You knew about TAHITI. You saw the footage. You knew what it took to bring me back and what it cost me. They _dissected_ me, May! They tore my mind apart and stitched it back together! You saw what I went through on that table. I begged to die!”  
  
“So did I!” She yelled back.  
  
For a moment, he was so wrapped up in his righteous indignation, he had no idea what she was referring to. When the realization hit him, all of the oxygen left the room.  
  
The anger in her eyes cooled a fraction as she watched him struggle to catch his breath.  
  
Memories he had long-since buried bubbled to the surface…  
  
A darkened motel room. The remnants of a shattered mirror pocked with bullet holes in the bathroom. A loaded gun that he had to pry out of her hand.  
  
He had not thought about that night in years. She would not want him to. She would not want him to think of her the way she was that night, at her lowest point. It was not her. Not anymore. Even now, he struggled to reconcile the fierce, tenacious woman standing in front of him with the broken wreck she had been when he finally found her.  
  
“June 8th, 2008,” she said softly. “The only reason I’m still here is because you found me before it was too late. When you finally tracked me to that motel and banged on the door, it startled me so bad, I missed and shot the mirror.”  
  
“I remember.”  
  
“Do you remember what you told me?”  
  
He did, but he could not reply. His mouth was too dry to form the words.  
  
“‘Never give up on yourself again,’” She recited. “‘You’re too important to me.’”  
  
He nodded.  
  
It had taken him three days of radio-silence after she left Andrew for him to find her. He knew she was not well, but nothing could have prepared him for the sound of the gunshot that went off when he knocked on the door of that seedy motel room. Of all of the things that had run through his head that night, it still amazed him that he was able to articulate anything at all through the blind panic he felt when he saw her curled up on the floor in a pool of broken glass. That those words had managed to make a difference to her was nothing short of miraculous.  
  
“I pushed everyone away after Bahrain and they let me,” May said. “You were the only one who didn’t listen. You saved my life, Phil. Then, years later, you gave me a new one. One that makes me glad I am still here.”  
  
“I’m glad you’re here, too,” he managed to say.  
  
“So why would I let you give up?” She asked. “When you wouldn’t let me?”  
  
There were a dozen retorts he could have fired off in reply.  
  
_It wasn’t the same! She wanted to die, but she was not_ actually _dying! Things were different now. She had so much to give, so much to live for. Recovery for her did not mean the same thing as it would for him._  
  
Each protest rang less true than the last.  
  
He knew what she had been through better than anyone.  
  
May had been in horrible pain. During that one mission, she had lost herself. In the months that followed, she lost everything else: her marriage, her home, her job, her friends. It had taken her years to claw her way out of that wreckage. It had taken him to help her do it.  
  
He had no right to tell her not to do the same for him.  
  
“What did the Cybertek scientists tell you, May?” He asked at last.  
  
“FitzSimmons talked to them for hours,” she demurred.  
  
“And?”  
  
“And they have a cure,” she said. “They’ve been perfecting the serum based on GH.325, weeding out the side effects, hypergraphia—  
  
“Catatonia, aphasia, psychosis—  
  
“All of it,” May concluded. “If the drug is administered quickly enough, there would be no need for surgery or cybernetic tech. You could heal. Completely.”  
  
She was not meeting his eyes. There was a catch.  
  
“But?” He prompted.  
  
May sighed.  
  
“It hasn’t been tested,” she answered.  
  
“On humans?”  
  
“On anything,” she admitted. “It’s theoretical. Designed in a simulation. Fitz and Simmons are working on synthesizing it right now.”  
  
Coulson gave her a sad smile. It was nothing he had not anticipated.  
  
“So, it may not work at all,” he surmised.  
  
“Maybe not.”  
  
“Or I could end up carving on walls again and holding people hostage at gun point.”  
  
May shifted uncomfortably on her injured leg and sank down on to the unmade bed behind her. Coulson joined her, resting his elbows on his knees. The implications of all they had said filled the silence between them.  
  
“You’ve been there through everything, May,” he said gently. “Can you understand why I don’t want to go through that again?”  
  
She turned to face him, her eyes downcast in reluctant acceptance.  
  
“What I don’t understand is why you were so ready to give up, even before this was an option. You’ve known about this for months, Phil. All the time we were in space, you knew, and you’d already thrown in the towel. That isn’t like you.”  
  
She was right, but there was no simple explanation that would made her understand. How could you tell somebody that you just knew it was your time?  
  
“I… May, I’m tired,” he said. “These last few years have been the best of my life. But for every person we have saved or added to the team, we’ve lost someone else. For every victory we’ve had, we’ve given more. I don’t know how much more I have left to give. If I came out of the other side of this with any less of myself than I had going in, I couldn’t do this job anymore.”  
  
A rueful smile on her lips caught his attention.  
  
“You know what I mean, don’t you?” He asked.  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “For as long as I can remember, all I’ve lived for is the next mission. But Daisy was right. With this injury, I’ll never be 100 percent again.”  
  
“So what would you do?” He asked. “If you didn’t have SHIELD?”  
  
“There’s always a way to do some good, Phil. The world isn’t getting any less complicated and taking out the bad guys isn’t the only way to make a difference.”  
  
“It’s just all I’ve ever known,” he said. “This life. SHIELD.”  
  
“Me too,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t have to be.”  
  
Coulson eyed the woman next to him like he was seeing a stranger. He should have been used to it by now, but every time he thought he knew her inside and out, she surprised him.  
  
They had the same indoctrination, same principles, same years of field work. They had given their youth and adult years to the same organization. It never even occurred to him that walking away was an option. Other options were something he had surrendered the moment he was accepted into the academy.  
  
How was it that she could see a future outside of this life, when he never could?  
  
Why did her hope for that future scare the hell out of him?  
  
He jerked when she placed a hand on his knee, but she pretended not to notice.  
  
“This cure that Fitz and Simmons are working on is risky,” she said, commanding his attention. “It’s dangerous. If you do go through it, you may be different. You’ve been through enough, Phil. If you decide that you can’t—  
  
Coulson hid a wince when her voice cracked. May pressed her lips together, collecting herself, and cleared her throat.  
  
“I will understand. But,” she added. “If you do go through with it, then whatever comes next, whatever you decide to do with the rest of your life, you won’t be alone.”


	6. Simmons

Years of field training and a deeply ingrained sense of pride in his physical fortitude sustained Coulson over the threshold of May’s room. He made it to the nearest bathroom before his knees buckled. Shaking fingers locked the latch above his head as he slid down onto the cold tile.  
  
Black dots swam in the periphery of his vision.  
  
He counted each breath, focusing on making each one longer than the last. His chest burned, but no more than usual. Air still saturated his lungs, unencumbered by the encroaching necrosis.  
  
With two fingers on his carotid artery, he measured his pulse, watching the seconds tick by on his wristwatch.  
  
78 beats per minute.  
  
A little elevated for him, but nothing alarming.  
  
He was physically alright. At least, he was not dying any faster than he was an hour ago.  
  
It was her.  
  
She had given him hope.  
  
Coulson banged a closed fist on the floor in frustration, but his mind still wandered. Snapshots of a future he never dared to wish for assaulted him behind his closed eyes.  
  
_A house decorated with all of his antique memorabilia. Walls covered with framed photos._  
  
_The freezing spray of the ocean crashing against the Irish coast._  
  
_Daisy, Simmons, and Fitz, laughing and teasing each other, unburdened by the tragedies that had made them grow up too fast._  
  
_Mack and Yo-Yo, chasing after a pair of toddlers, their mischievous grins matching those of their parents._  
  
_And May._  
  
When he imagined her in this fictional future, she was safe. Safe and smiling and at his side.  
  
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, shaking off the flights of fancy before he could hope for anything more with her. It hurt too much. It was a life he wanted for all of them, but he could not be there for it.  
  
He couldn’t.  
  
Coulson grabbed the door handle and pulled himself to his feet. A glance at his pallid complexion in the mirror was all the reminder he needed about the realities of the present. Nothing was getting any easier. There were still things he had to accomplish before his time was gone.  
  
“Alright, Phil,” he whispered. “Back to work.”

  


***

  
The control room was already humming with activity by the time he pulled himself together. The others glanced up when he entered the room and May briefed him on the situation. If she noticed his haggard appearance or lack of focus, she ignored it out of professional deference to the task at hand.

Facial recognition had pulled dozens of hits on General Hale from security footage, satellite feed, even social media. Whatever her plans were for SHIELD, they did not include being discrete.

“I think that’s the whole point,” Daisy replied, when he commented on this. “Check out who else she has been seen with.”

Coulson accepted the smartpad she handed to him, eyes narrowing in recognition at the images on the screen.

“Werner Von Strucker,” he muttered. “Looks like he’s feeling better.”

“Which isn’t good news for you,” May said. “He can’t be happy about what happened back in the memory machine.”

“Yeah, well, neither am I,” he said. “It wasn’t one of my finer moments. Is that Carl Creel standing next to him?”

The others nodded.

“Who’s the girl?”

“We don’t know,” Mack said. “But she could be the ninja who sliced off Yo-Yo’s arms.”

“You think?” Coulson asked skeptically. “She’s just a kid.”

“Height and weight is a match,” Yo-Yo said. “I remember. Trust me.”

“Okay,” Coulson said. “So, Hale’s assembling a team of powered people and she’s not being subtle about it. What’s her angle?”

“Trying to draw us out?” Mack suggested.

“Whatever it is, we’ll know more after we do some recon up close,” Daisy said. “May, you’re on transpo. Yo-Yo, you want to field test the new arms?”

Yo-Yo grinned.

“Like you have to ask.”

“Hey, recon only,” Mack reminded her. “If that girl’s responsible for what happened to you, she’ll get what’s coming to her.”

“Recon only,” Yo-Yo echoed with an irrepressible smile. “I promise.”

“Great,” Daisy said. “That leaves Mack and Coulson running back end.”

“What about Fitz and Simmons?” Coulson wondered out loud.

Suddenly, everyone became very interested in examining their gear, purposely avoiding his eyes. Everyone but May, who stared at him pointedly.

“Oh,” he realized. “Right. The side project.”

There was no point in protesting. They had their assignments and there was work to be done.

Daisy looked up and cleared her throat.

“So, are we good?” She asked.

“Wheels up in ten,” May confirmed.

“Good,” Daisy agreed. “Let’s move.”

May and Yo-Yo barely glanced back as they followed Daisy out of the control room.

In spite of everything, Coulson could not help but smile. He had done something right there. Daisy was a natural leader.

***

Transportation to the site of an op always went quicker when you were in the plane, steeling yourself for the mission, or coordinating the events from the ground, making sure everything went off without a hitch. Running back end and waiting for intel to come in was… boring.

He had forgotten just how boring it was. It had been years since he had this little responsibility.

“How long until they reach the target?” Coulson asked.

“About three minutes less than the last time you asked,” Mack muttered, not looking up from his video game.

Coulson sighed and stared at the blank monitors.

This was not how he pictured spending his final days.

If Daisy kept benching him, he might have to pull rank, if for no other reason than to not have this much time to think. Boredom was the fastest track to depression. He was not spending whatever time he had left stewing in a mire of what-ifs and regrets.

“… for you…. At least two hours. Might as well do something with it.”

“What?” Coulson asked.

Mack put down the controller.

“Take a walk, Coulson,” he ordered. “We’ve got time. I’ll com you when they reach the site.”

With little more than a cursory last glance at the monitors, Coulson nodded and took him up on his suggestion.

There were miles of floors within the Lighthouse to explore, but Coulson had already seen most of them in the worst light possible. The idea of roaming through those darkened corridors and being reminded of how they could be repurposed under the Kree if SHIELD failed held little appeal for him. He would not have minded combing through the contents of the boxes that the Chronicoms had hoarded for safe-keeping, if it had not been for the rift to the Fear Dimension spitting out manifestations of his worst nightmares right in the middle of the storage bay.

Without even realizing where he was going, Coulson wandered into the corridor where Fitz and Simmons had set up their makeshift laboratory. Muffled laughter and lowered voices stopped him before he reached the lab.

He could not make himself go any further.

The professional leader in him compelled him to check in on his teammates and keep himself up-to-date on their progress. Except in this case, ‘progress’ meant manufacturing an untested cure for his rapidly-approaching mortality that he had expressly forbidden them from seeking out.

He was still frozen in indecision when Simmons exited the lab. She did not see him at first, apparently lost in her own thoughts. Coulson watched her smile to herself and tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear before scuffing his shoe loudly against the floor so as not to startle her.

“Oh!”

Her eyes flew to his and she blushed furiously, seeming almost abashed for being so cheerful in the face of his current state. Coulson immediately regretted disturbing her.

“Sorry Jems,” he said. “I just came down to… well, May filled me in on last night’s op.”

Simmons recovered and slid into what Coulson thought of as her “doctor smile.” It was a manufactured expression that would have been transparently patronizing on anyone else, but on her it was comforting. Reassuring. She had a rare gift for calming the chaos around her with an aura of authority and patience.

It was one of the reasons he had selected her for his team.

That confidence and warmth inspired trust in everyone who was lucky enough to know her. Coulson was no less swayed by it now than he was when they had first met.

“I know that you don’t approve, Sir,” she began.

“And yet…”

“And yet,” she said. “We’ve made astonishing progress within the last few hours.”

“You think you can actually make this stuff that the Cybertek guys designed?”

“Oh, we’ve already synthesized it, Sir,” she said proudly.

 _What?_  
“It wasn’t difficult,” Simmons rushed to explain. “There was nothing in the compound that was too exotic. It was just a matter of rearranging the molecular structure. Fitz modified some of the antiquated tech and we produced the first batch a few hours ago.”

Coulson was having trouble closing his mouth. He had no idea creating a cure for death would be so simple.

“Sir?” She asked. “Are you alright?”

“If… if it was that easy, why didn’t the Cybertek scientists try to produce it?”

Simmons sighed and crossed her arms.

“Because they knew what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands,” she explained. “These men were recruited by Hydra at gunpoint. Fitz and I talked to them for hours. It took forever to get them to open up. They designed the drug but told their ‘employers’ that it was impossible to manufacture. Hoping to buy themselves some time, I suspect.”

Coulson nodded.

“Smart move,” he said. “Hydra was hard enough to take down when they _weren’t_ being resurrected by miracle serum.”

“Well, their gamble paid off, thanks to you,” Simmons said, beaming. “Your joint task force eliminated Hydra before they realized that the scientists were lying. They’ve trusted us with the formula on the condition that it never falls into the hands of the government.”

“Don’t they know we _are_ the government?” Coulson smirked.

“Past tense, Sir,” Simmons reminded him. “And future, hopefully. But at the moment, our ‘wanted’ status in the eyes of the law is working in our favor. In this case, at least.”

His gaze had become fixed and unfocused. It was a lot to process.

That was nothing new.

There was always a lot to sort through and compartmentalize. It never used to wear on him like this.

“Coulson? Are you alright?”

He blinked and worked his mouth into a half-smile.

“Sorry, Jemma. Just thinking,” he said. “I interrupted you. You were busy. I just came to have a look.”

“I was just going to catch a couple of hours of sleep, honestly,” she admitted. “We’ve started the testing phase, but it’s been a long night and we—we got distracted.”

“You know that Fitz has never been great at working with dead animals,” she rushed to explain.

“It’s fine, Jemma,” he said. “Go get some rest.”

She shot him a smile of gratitude and squeezed his shoulder on her way past. After a few paces, the soft echo of her tennis shoes on the concrete floor stopped. Coulson turned around to see her watching him thoughtfully.

The doctor smile was gone.

“What is it?” He asked.

“Even if these tests go well on rats, it’s not a guaranteed cure, Coulson,” she confessed.

“I know.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist and stared over his shoulder.

“You’re not going to try it, are you?” She asked. “After what you went through before, even if we get it all right this time, you’re still not going to do it.”

Coulson stepped towards her, forcing her to look at him.

“Would you do it, Jemma?” He asked gently. “Try an untested drug that could make you… lose yourself?”

Simmons smiled tightly through the tears that leaked down her cheeks.

“Yes,” she replied. “I would. I’m not you, Sir. I haven’t been through TAHITI and I can’t tell you what to do. But yes, I would try it.”

“Even knowing what it could do to you?”

She nodded adamantly.

“Coulson… everything dies. Every one of us will die. We will go one by one and we will have to learn to grieve and be strong and move on with whoever is left until it is our turn. But right now, we are alive and we have each other. Every moment we have together is a gift. Why be in a rush to cut that short?”

Coulson shrugged helplessly.

“I’m not in a rush,” he said. “I’ve already lived five years longer than I should have.”

“And look what you’ve done with it!” Simmons exclaimed. “Think of what you could do with another five years. Or ten. There are still people that you could help. Maybe even people that you haven’t met yet.”

Simmons flushed and wiped the moisture from her face with a brush of her hand.

“You asked what I would do?” she continued. “I would trust my team. Even if I wasn’t the same person afterwards, I would trust them to remind me of the person I used to be.”

“What if it’s not enough?” He asked.

“It was for you.”

His eyes slipped from hers. He could not see the earnestness there, the certainty that she was right.

She _was_ right.

They had brought him back before.

He was not the same person he was before TAHITI.

He was better.

Because of them.

“Coulson?” She asked. “If it were me, I would take any chance to stay with the people who love me.”

He nodded, feeling all of his strength leave him.

“Thank you, Jemma.”

  



	7. Fitz

_“You did this wrong, Phil…There’s nothing without you… That’s why it’s wrong… They’re starting a life together and you won’t be there to see any of it…We passed easy a long time ago.”_  
  
_“You can’t make me give up on you…I would take any chance…Why would I let you give up?”_  
  
_“You’re my friend…You saved my life…I trust you, Coulson…”_  
  
_“There are still people that you can help…You still have more to do…You won’t be alone.”_  
  
He tried to sleep.  
  
After a night spent in an alcohol-induced coma and a day filled with one draining conversation after another, Coulson could not get to his room to crash fast enough. As soon as they had confirmation from the field team that the trackers were in place on Hale’s new anti-Avengers and May had the plane in the air, Coulson excused himself and retired to his bunk. The Zephyr was due back at the Lighthouse in four hours and Mack agreed to stay on coms if there were any signs of trouble.  
  
Coulson did not even bother to undress before falling into the mattress.  
  
Minutes passed, then an hour, and even though the weight of exhaustion was making his head hurt, he was still wide awake.  
  
Every time he began to drift off, he heard them chastising him, pleading with him, filling him with hope he did not want, tethering him to this life with everything that they had.  
  
After two hours, he gave up and stumbled to the kitchen. He had some half-formed ideas about getting a glass of scotch to calm his nerves, but by the time he sat down at the bar and realized he was empty-handed, he was too tired to get up again. Maybe if he sat staring long enough, he could silence the voices in his head.  
  
“You’re considering it, aren’t you?”  
  
Coulson almost fell off of the bar stool in surprise.  
  
“What the hell?” Fitz asked him. “Are you alright?”  
  
Coulson stared up at the young man perched next to him at the bar.  
  
“How long have you been here?”  
  
“About three seconds,” Fitz said. “Didn’t you hear me come in?”  
  
“I guess not.”  
  
God, he was slipping. It was alright to zone out a little in the base where it was safe, but what if he had been in the field? Maybe Daisy had been right to bench him.  
  
“No offense,” Fitz said. “But you look like you could use some sleep, Sir.”  
  
Coulson shot him a sideways glance laced with enough venom to paralyze a charging rhino.  
  
“Right,” Fitz said, with an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Jemma said she ran into you earlier. Thought you seemed to be having a rough go of it.”  
  
He had been around Fitz and Simmons long enough to be acclimated to the vernacular of British understatement, but that was a classic. Only Fitz could make the anguish of making a life and death decision sound no more troublesome than a spot of bad traffic.  
  
“I’ve had better days,” he replied dryly.  
  
Fitz fiddled with his mobile, keeping his active hands occupied. The new wedding band on his left hand clicked against the screen as he flipped the device over and over.  
  
“Well, I’ve resurrected twelve mice in the last two hours,” he announced.  
  
Coulson blinked.  
  
“Out of how many?”  
  
“Fifteen,” Fitz said.  
  
“The other three just…”  
  
Fitz shook his head.  
  
“Yeah, but, it’s just a beta test,” he demurred. “There are plenty of variables to consider. I mean, Deke picked up the mice, so who knows what happened to them in transport.”  
  
Coulson did smile at that.  
  
“The twelve that came back are all doing fine,” Fitz continued. “Of course, you can’t test for psychosis in rats. Their brains aren’t comparable to humans’. Nothing is. So if you agree to the serum, we won’t know—  
  
“I know.”  
  
“But you’re still considering it, aren’t you?” He persisted.  
  
“Why do you think that?”  
  
“It’s why you’re still awake, isn’t it? You’re thinking about it.”  
  
“I—I don’t know, Fitz.”  
  
He really did not know anymore. He was so tired, he could barely string together a coherent thought, much less make a decision of that magnitude. All he knew for sure was that the certainty that had sustained him for months was starting to crack and erode. Without that foothold to grab onto, he was lost.  
  
Fitz leaned onto his elbows, stretching out the hunched posture he had acquired from standing over a lab table all day.  
  
“Well, I’ll respect your decision whatever you decide, Sir,” he said. “Jemma and I read the reports from the Guest House. I know what the drug did and how it did it. I get why you’re not eager to repeat that.”  
  
Coulson relaxed just a fraction.  
  
“Thanks, Fitz.”  
  
His head started to sink into his chest. Maybe this would do the trick. Maybe Fitz’s assurance would drown out the protestations of the others. At least long enough for him to get a few hours of sleep.  
  
A whispered rustle from his right grabbed his attention. Coulson glanced up to see Fitz mouthing something excitedly to a figure lingering in the doorway. He broke off when he caught Coulson’s glance and the tips of his ears went pink.  
  
Simmons waved at the two of them from the kitchen entrance.  
  
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Just saying goodnight.”  
  
“Goodnight Jemma,” he replied.  
  
“Be there in a bit, Jems,” Fitz added.  
  
Even after she had gone, an upturned quirk remained in the corner of Fitz’s mouth. Coulson looked from him to the vacated doorway, and back again. Fitz was growing redder with each pass.  
  
“You okay?” Coulson asked with a teasing lilt.  
  
Fitz returned his feigned concerned with the most unconvincing wide-eyed innocent stare Coulson had ever witnessed.  
  
“Fitz, you two are married now,” he continued. “Everyone knows you are sleeping together. It hasn’t been a secret for a while.”  
  
If possible, Fitz blushed even more.  
  
“It’s not that,” he mumbled.  
  
Now he was genuinely curious as to what could have made the engineer regress to a bashful teenager, but he knew better than to push it.  
  
“Alright,” Coulson acquiesced.  
  
He would tell him when he was ready.  
  
“We didn’t know how to tell you,” Fitz blurted out.  
  
“Tell me what?”  
  
He had slipped into his controlled director-tone without even meaning to.  
  
“Look, we both respect you,” Fitz said. “And we know what you are going through, so we didn’t think it was a good time… and I didn’t know if we even should…”  
  
“Rip off the Band-Aid, Fitz,” he ordered.  
  
“Right,” Fitz exhaled. “The thing is… Jemma’s pregnant.”  
  
Coulson was on his feet and embracing the younger man before he even knew what he was doing. Fitz’s shoulders unclenched and he hugged him back. His heartbeat was so strong and fast, Coulson could feel it vibrating in his own chest.  
  
“That’s amazing,” was all he could say.  
  
Fitz nodded and extracted himself from Coulson’s grip with a sniff.  
  
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It really is.”  
  
“How long have you…?”  
  
“Uh, well,” Fitz hedged. “We don’t _really_ know, on account of the whole time-travel thing. Six months passed here, but we were only in space for a few weeks—  
  
He broke off and fiddled with his phone.  
  
“But…” he said, flicking through files with his thumb. “Jemma reckons she’s about eight to ten weeks old.”  
  
A sepia-toned recording filled the screen that Fitz held up for him to see. Coulson squinted and the image resolved into the shape of a tiny person, all head and belly, with four slight protrusions that each ended in five impossibly small digits. The figure’s legs flailed and one arm brushed the side of its face before the recording stopped and it froze in place.  
  
The video had stopped, but he did not want to look away.  
  
He was still staring at the screen, trying to memorize every detail when Fitz grinned and returned the phone to his back pocket.  
  
“You—you said it’s a girl?” He asked when he was able to talk again.  
  
“Yeah, I mean, normally it’s too early to tell at this stage, but I was able to adjust the contrast ratio on the ultrasound and enhance it with some new LIDAR tech I’ve been working on—it’s not dangerous,” he added.  
  
Coulson shrugged. He had no idea what he was talking about anyway.  
  
“But yeah,” Fitz finished. “It’s a girl.”  
  
“Congratulations, Fitz,” he said, squeezing his shoulder. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while. Maybe ever, in fact.”  
  
Fitz gave him a tight smile and shoved his hands in his pockets.  
  
“Would you—would you mind sending me that video?” Coulson asked.  
  
“Yeah, of course, Sir,” Fitz said.  
  
He took out his phone again, flicked the screen a few times and Coulson’s own device buzzed in his pocket.  
  
“Sent,” he acknowledged.  
  
“Thank you,” Coulson said.  
  
He would never be able to sleep now. But Fitz needed to.  
  
Coulson tucked in the bar stool and walked past his subordinate with a final clap on his shoulder. He was almost at the door when Fitz stopped him.  
  
“I want you to stay.”  
  
His skin prickled as the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Coulson turned around, keeping his face studiously blank.  
  
“I know,” Fitz said, groaning. “I know it’s manipulative and it’s not fair to you to say it. That’s why we were thinking of not telling you about the baby.”  
  
“I’m glad you did,” he replied. “But—  
  
“Coulson…” Fitz trailed off, frozen in a helpless shrug. “I’m going to be a dad.”  
  
“Yeah, you are,” Coulson said. “And you’ll be an amazing father, no matter what.”  
  
“Well, if that’s true at all, it’s because of you.”  
  
A hint of pink returned to his cheeks, but Fitz continued.  
  
“You heard about my dad from the Framework. It was a distortion, because it was the bloody Framework. But it wasn’t far off. The best thing he ever did for me was leave. So, everything I know about being a parent, I learned from my mum and from you.”  
  
“And May, I guess,” he added. “But mostly just how to avoid being shot, which I really hope I don’t have to pass along to my kid…”  
  
“Anyway, I know it’s not what you were looking to be when you hired me and Simmons, but it’s what you became. My real dad and Radcliffe…they abused my trust and betrayed me, but not you. You--you were always there, encouraging me, keeping me in line, or just stopping me from getting me from getting my arse shot off.”  
  
“You don’t understand what that means to me,” Fitz concluded.  
  
He really didn’t. Not until now.  
  
“So, I want you to be there when she gets here,” Fitz said. “I want you to meet my little girl.”  
  
“I—  
  
“Maybe I’m a horrible person for even asking.”  
  
“You’re not,” Coulson told him firmly. “You’re not a horrible person.”  
  
With his energy spent, Fitz let out a shaky breath and seemed to fold into himself. Coulson crossed the kitchen and pulled him into his arms. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pain that shot through him feeling Fitz’s shoulders rise and fall with shuddering gasps.  
  
“It’s okay,” he muttered. “It’ll be okay.”  
  
Fitz pulled away with a muffled “sorry.”  
  
“It’s alright, Fitz,” Coulson assured him.  
  
“I shouldn’t have—  
  
“Yeah, you should have,” Coulson cut him off. “Thank you. Thank you for… for telling me.”  
  
“I… you should go to bed, Sir,” Fitz said.  
  
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You too.”  
  
The pair shuffled down the abandoned corridor before heading their separate ways.  
  
Sitting on the bed back in his darkened bunk, Coulson shifted uncomfortably when the edge of the phone in his back pocket dig into his hip. He pulled out the phone and saw the new message notification. His thumb flicked open the attachment and the grainy feed from Simmons’s ultrasound lit up the screen.  
  
The video played on a loop and he watched, helplessly transfixed.  
  
Even with Fitz’s tweaks to the resolution, the image was hard to make out. The handheld device that recorded the image shook, blurring the movements of the tiny child in the centre of the screen.  
  
Somehow, it was still one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.  
  
In spite of everything they had been through, or maybe because of it, Fitz and Simmons had managed to do more than just survive, they had created something new and wonderful. Even here, at what might be the beginning of the end of the world, they had enough faith in the future to make a new life.  
  
And if Coulson clung to the remains of his crumbling resolve, he would never live to see it.  
  
The face of his phone cracked when it slipped through his fingers and hit the floor.  
  
Whatever was left of his strength evaporated.  
  
He held his head in his hands and cried.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of the kudos and bookmarks, guys! Let me know what you think of this so far!


	8. Whatever Comes Next

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting this one! Real life got really real this week.  
> Hope it's worth the wait!

The catharsis that came from a hot shower at the end of an interminable day was something that Melinda May would never take for granted again after her stint in the future. There was nothing comparable to feeling her knotted muscles unwind under the pounding spray, to breathe easier with every steamy inhalation.  
  
Today’s mission had been a milk run.  
  
She had little to do but ferry Daisy and Yo-Yo to the target and wait for their call for extraction. Yo-Yo had been little more than backup, but just being out in the field and getting to feel useful again had done wonders for her mood.  
  
Daisy had installed trackers on Hale’s personal quinjet and two SUVs.  
  
They had nothing to do now but wait to see where they led them. It was a small step, but just getting out of the base where the dark mood had permeated into the very walls had lifted her mood considerably.  
  
She padded down the hallway, towelling her hair dry. She was almost at her room when she heard a muffled crack, followed by a moan.  
  
May froze in place, eyes scanning the darkness, searching for the source of the disturbance. The loudest sound came from the thumping in her chest.  
  
From a room up ahead, a shuttering gasp reached her ears, followed by another. Someone struggling to breathe.  
  
_Phil._  
  
She covered the distance to his room in five quick strides. Finding the door locked, she backed up to kick it in when a sniff on the other side made her hesitate. Drawing closer, she listened in silence to the noises inside his room. Coulson’s breaths were ragged, but steady. He was not dying. He was sobbing.  
  
She should go.  
  
He would not want her to see him like this.  
  
She was not sure she could handle seeing him break down herself. He had not cried in front of anyone since his mother’s funeral. He probably wanted to be left alone.  
  
With her mouth pressed into a tight line, she raised her hand and tapped lightly on the door.  
  
_Screw it,_ she thought.  
  
If he had his way, she would soon be spending the rest of her life alone. He could suffer her company for a few minutes.  
  
“Phil, it’s me,” she said quietly. “Can you open the door?”  
  
She listened to his shuffling footsteps and heard the scratch of the deadbolt turn in the lock. His face was obscured in the dim light of the hallway, but she could still make out blotches of pink on his cheeks and the sheen from where he had wiped his tears away.  
  
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her without comment.  
  
Coulson stumbled back to the bed and reached over to flick on the desklamp on his nightstand. He sat slumped on the unmade bed, with a broken phone at his feet.  
  
Had their roles situations been reversed, Coulson would have made some sort of cheesy joke to break the ice. She would have cast him a withering look of guarded affection and he would have taken it as an invitation to ask her what was bothering her. Somehow, he would find the right words to offer some insight or comfort. She would pretend to brush it off and he would walk away, knowing that she would be alright.  
  
But he was not wrong when he told her that she “didn’t do comforting.”  
  
It was not that she did not want to. She had just never learned how.  
  
“Did something happen?” She tried.  
  
Coulson answered the question with a sad smile.  
  
May winced from the lingering ache in her leg when she took a seat beside him.  
  
“Are you having second thoughts?” She guessed.  
  
“Second,” he answered. “Third, fourth…”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
She nodded.  
  
Someone had gotten under his skin. Or maybe they all had, in their own way. It was hard to stand firm in your principles when everyone you trusted was telling you that you were wrong.  
  
Out of lack of anything to say, May reached for the phone on the floor and picked it up. The face was cracked and the screen was frozen on a grainy still.  
  
“Phil? What is…?”  
  
“S’Jemma,” he mumbled. “Well, it’s—  
  
“This is an ultrasound,” she realized.  
  
Her eyes widened and her lips parted in shock.  
“Yeah. Fitz sent it to me,” Coulson explained. “See? That’s her head there.”  
  
He traced the outline of the fetus with his pinky. May watched, mesmerized.  
  
“And that’s her middle… I think that’s a leg right there, but it’s hard to tell.”  
  
“Wow,” May whispered.  
  
“Yup,” Coulson agreed, leaning back. “Fitz didn’t want to say anything. Thought it would affect my decision.”  
  
“Didn’t stop him from showing you this,” she commented.  
  
“Yeah. He probably thought it would affect my decision,” he repeated ironically.  
  
“It did, didn’t it?” She asked as gently as could.  
  
As much as she wanted him to stay, she still hurt for him and for what he must be feeling under all of the pressure the team had put on him. It was not fair. No part of this was right. He should not have to be subject to an experimental medical procedure because of their inability to let him go. He should not have to suffer their pain in addition to his own. He should not be spending any time he had left alone in the dark, crying over the child that he would never meet, or for failing the expectations of his team.  
  
A shuttered sigh met her inquiry and she put her arm around him. He leaned against her and she kissed his temple, tasting salt on her lips. Pulling away took more strength than she thought she was capable of.  
  
“It’s no one’s decision but yours.”  
  
Her larynx felt like it was being squeezed in a vice, but she managed to get the words out.  
  
“You—you shouldn’t stay if you… You can’t stay for us,” she stuttered. “If you decide to take the drug, it should be because you want to.”  
  
Coulson looked at her with a knowing smile.  
  
“Do you really believe that?” He asked.  
  
“What I believe is that you don’t owe us anything, Phil. You’ve given everything you have to SHIELD and to the team. Whatever you do next, it needs to be for yourself.”  
  
He studied her for traces for insincerity, for any indication that she was hiding something. May thanked years of undercover work for her flawless acting skills and prayed that he did not look to closely. Anything she kept to herself would have to remain buried. She was not selfish enough to tie him to a life he did not want with her own sentiments.  
  
“I don’t want to leave you, Melinda,” he said at last. “I don’t want to leave any of you. I just… I didn’t think I mattered that much.”  
  
Coulson’s bedroom door burst open at that moment, saving May the trouble of protesting.  
  
“Are you insane?” Daisy croaked from the doorway. She was shaking from head to toe and her cheeks were streaked with tears.  
  
“Daisy!” May chastised.  
  
“How long have you been standing there?” Coulson asked.  
  
“I heard you from the hallway. You were—I thought you were dying!” She defended.  
  
“Not yet,” Coulson answered.  
  
“Not funny!” Daisy snapped.  
  
She crossed the room and knelt on the floor in front of the two of them.  
  
“Look, I heard what May said and… she’s right,” Daisy said. “We’re all being selfish and it—it’s no one’s decision to make but yours. But we’re being selfish because we love you! How can you think that you don’t matter?”  
  
Coulson looked to May pleadingly, who merely raised her eyebrows in reply. She was not helping him out of this one.  
  
“I’m just one person, Daisy,” he tried to explain. “Everything I’ve done I did because I thought it was the right thing to do. But that’s just how I was trained. It’s how we were all trained. I stepped up because Fury needed me to, but if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.”  
  
“‘Someone else?’” Daisy echoed. “You think _anyone_ else would have seen me as anything other than a leak in the system that had to be stopped? Coulson, I would have been locked up in a SHIELD black site if any other agent had caught me for hacking into classified intel. Any other agent would have taken one look at FitzSimmon’s lack of field of experience and left them in SciOps, where they probably would have gotten shot when Hydra took over. No other agent would have been able to convince May to leave admin to come out into the field again, and Yo-Yo—  
  
“Okay, Daisy, I get it,” Coulson interrupted.  
  
“Do you?” Daisy asked. “Do you really? Because if you still think you don’t matter then I don’t think you get it at all.”  
  
May had never been prouder of her. It was this reason that she admired Daisy more than any other. She always managed to find the words that she could never bring herself to say.  
  
“You see potential in people when anyone else would see a lost cause,” Daisy continued. “You push us to be the best people we can be and then you do everything you can to keep us safe. _No one_ else does that, Coulson. No one else cares like you do. You cannot possibly think that after all you have done for us that you don’t matter to us.”  
  
May pretended not to see the unshed tears in Coulson’s eyes when he reached down and pulled Daisy up from the floor to sit beside them on the bed. She counted the minutes in heartbeats while Daisy cried silently into Coulson’s shoulder and he squeezed her own hand so tightly that the tips of her fingers turned purple.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Her head jerked up in surprise, only to realize that he was talking to Daisy.  
  
“I love you too,” Daisy muttered.  
  
“I want you to remember that,” he said. “Because I don’t know what this serum is going to do to me.”  
  
May was sure her incredulity matched Daisy’s own shocked expression.  
  
“Whatever I say or do afterwards, remember this,” he said. “Remember me how I am now. This is the real me, okay? And I love you very much.”  
  
May pried her fingers loose from Coulson’s grip just in time for Daisy launch to herself at him, nearly knocking him over in a hug. Her head was still spinning. She could have sunk into the floor with relief.  
  
“I promise,” she heard Daisy say over his shoulder. “I promise I’ll remember. But you’ll still be you, Coulson. You have all of us. We’ll take care of you no matter what.”  
  
“I know,” he said.  
  
He released her with a kiss on the forehead.  
  
“Thank you,” Daisy said.  
  
Coulson gave her a tired smile.  
  
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Daisy.”  
  
She shot them both a teary-eyed smile, gave May a quick squeeze on the shoulder, and exited the room.  
  
May did not want to press her luck, but she needed to know.  
  
“Phil, are you sure about this?”  
  
The creases that had lined the corners of his eyes seemed smoother now and the tension in his shoulders had fallen away. Whatever it was he had been carrying for the last few days: guilt from letting his team down, the burden of his impending death, or some combination of both, it was gone now. He was at peace.  
  
“It might not work, May,” he reminded her.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I need you to promise me something.”  
  
Even now, she knew enough not to agree to anything until all of the cards were on the table.  
  
“If I go off the rails again—  
  
“I’m not going to kill you,” she said flatly.  
  
“I know,” he said. “Just… would you remind me? Would you remind me of who I am?”  
  
_Was that all?_  
  
Of course she would. She would tell him every day until he remembered. She would take out their Academy Yearbook with that awful photo of her with the bangs and the side-ponytail if it was what he needed.  
  
“Yes,” she agreed. “If you need it, I’ll remind you.”  
  
She stood up on wobbly legs and made it to the door before her conscience got the better of her.  
  
“Are you doing this for you or for the team?” She asked.  
  
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” he answered. “But I know that this is the right thing to do. For everyone.”  
  
May nodded. Under the circumstances, it was the best that she could hope for.  
  
“May?” He asked, as she reached for the doorknob. “Did you mean it before when you said that whatever comes next…?”  
  
“I’ll be there,” she promised. “Always.”  
  
He gave her a genuine smile for the first time in weeks.  
  
“Then I’m ready.”


	9. Epilogue: In the Right Direction

Phil Coulson died for the second time on April 27th of 2018.  
  
His heart had stopped beating for less than a minute before Simmons administered the modified serum that would give him his third and final life. He awoke with no memory of who he was or what had happened, just a feeling that something had gone wrong. But unlike the first time he returned from the dead, he was not alone.  
  
Even as he stared blankly at the faces of the six strangers that hovered over him, something more deeply ingrained than memory told him that whoever he was, whatever had happened to him, these people loved him.  
  
In the months that followed, he seldom had a moment to himself as the team tried to help him piece together the shattered remnants of his memory. He learned their names and began to understand what to expect each time they visited him in the suite he occupied in a quiet corner of an underground base.  
  
He knew that Jemma Simmons would come in first thing in the morning, prattling on about the results of his latest fMRI, PET, or CT scan, very little of which he actually understood. She would invariably stop halfway through her harried analysis after seeing his raised eyebrow, would give him a reassuring smile, and insist that he was making excellent progress. Sometimes she would try to apologize for the unforeseen side effects of the serum that had essentially rewired portions of his prefrontal cortex, but would stop when he reminded her that he had undergone the procedure willingly.  
  
It was the one thing from his previous existence that he remembered with certainty.  
  
On these occasions, she would nod sadly and conclude her visit with a kiss on his temple, telling him that the others would be by to see him soon. He always felt better after she came by. He might not understand the intricacies of his neurological test results, but he trusted her. And something in his gut told him that the side effects could have been much worse.  
  
Yo-Yo and Mack usually came by to see him together.  
  
Unlike the others, neither of the agents pressed him about his progress or how much he had managed to recollect from before the procedure. After a perfunctory inquiry about how he was feeling, the three of them passed a few hours playing video games (Coulson began to suspect this was largely for Yo-Yo’s benefit, since she needed work on her fine motor skills) or poker (Mack lost round after round with a rueful grin, insisting that Coulson’s skill for bluffing had gotten better since he lost his memory.)  
  
Sometimes, Coulson would just listen as the two told stories from their time in the field, or tried to keep him up-to-date on SHIELD’s operations. It was during these conversations that Coulson would cast a weary eye at his watch, counting down the minutes until they would leave. His poker-face may have improved, but there was no way to hide the fact that he was unable to follow half of what they said, having forgotten most of the key players in their stories.  
  
It was Daisy’s visits that he began to dread the most.  
  
It was not that he did not like her. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was funny, uninhibited, and inexplicably hero-worshiped him.  
  
That was why it hurt so much to disappoint her.  
  
No matter how many times she asked him, “Remember when…?,” his only reply was a tight-lipped smile and a shrug. Although she was a grown woman, there was still a trace of youthful impatience about her that was exacerbated by her inability to understand that her line of questioning was not helping him recollect any of his lost memories. If anything, it was making the situation worse as he struggled to connect the scattered dots for her sake. She always left him with a smile that did nothing to hide the sadness she must have felt from not being able to help him.  
  
More than once, Fitz had cut their sessions short to notify Daisy of some emergency or another that needed her oversight. The third time this happened, Coulson called him out. His memory might have been shot, but there was nothing wrong with his instincts.  
  
“Is there some reason Daisy is always needed most when she comes by to see me, Fitz?”  
  
The young man examined the ground for a moment with his mouth twisted to the side.  
  
“She means well,” Fitz said. “But she’s hurting you. Sometimes not being able to be the person you want to be, not being able to live up to her expectations… it just makes things worse.”  
  
That was the first time that Coulson truly remembered something from his past. Not just a twinge of familiarity when he heard a lilt in Jemma’s cheerful cadence, or a sense of comfort when he caught a whiff of a fragrance that he recognized, but a genuine memory.  
  
He remembered Fitz.  
  
He remembered a younger, shier Fitz, who could not form full sentences without pausing and squinching his face in frustration. He remembered a man, scarcely more than a boy, trying to make his hands perform intricate tasks and shaking from the effort. He remembered a person who talked to his best friend as if she was right beside him, even though he was the only one who could see her.  
  
“Coulson, you alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” he replied, blinking away the recollection. “You understand, don’t you?”  
  
Fitz eyed him carefully.  
  
“Yeah, I do.”  
  
Coulson met his inquiring gaze with a muted smile.  
  
“Thank you,” he said simply.  
  
Fitz accepted the thanks with a nod and left him to mull over what had just happened for the few hours out of the day that he had to himself.  
  


***

May 27th, 2019

May rolled down in the window in the SHIELD-issued SUV and let the gust of ocean air whip through her hair, calming her mind and relaxing her after a long day’s work.  
It had been another busy day. They had all been busy days over the past year.

Re-establishing SHIELD as a legitimate government agency in the wake of Thanos’s destruction and a close shave with a Kree incursion had been no small feat. It was all the more difficult without Phil Coulson at the helm.

Coulson’s memories had been slow to return, but over the course of six months following his second resurrection, he had stitched together the fragments of his previous life with the help of his team. In many ways, he had reverted to the person he was before the procedure, right down to his conviction that it was Daisy’s time to take control of the team. The biggest change was that he was ready to discover a life outside of SHIELD.

During the chaos between the Infinity War and the Kree invasion, an opportunity was presented for him to do just that.

Whether they were fighting against Thanos or being used as bargaining chips to bribe the Kree (unsuccessfully, thanks to SHIELD’s intervention,) Inhumans and powered people had been targeted by the media in the previous months. Now more visible than ever, these people were alternately reviled and worshiped by the public.

The fallout was predictable.

Some acquired celebrity status or were offered lucrative contracts by multiple branches of the military. Others lost their jobs or their friends. Children and teenagers with abilities were disowned by their families.

Under Daisy Johnson’s leadership, one of SHIELD’s primary mandates became to protect these dispossessed individuals. Coulson oversaw a project that placed homeless Inhuman adolescents with new families. Due to Daisy’s traumatic experiences with the foster system, she enforced a stringent vetting process for any applicant wanting to adopt. While they waited for their future guardians to be approved under Daisy’s watchful eye, the children found a temporary home at a SHIELD-run complex.

Coulson bought the property on the California coast years ago as a retirement option. The beach condo had been a safehouse during the old days at SHIELD and he bought it for a next to nothing after the Hydra coup. Now, the whole complex was filled with kids and SHIELD-contracted teachers and guardians. Coulson spent his semi-retirement corralling the lot of them.

May thought that it suited him.

_“He seems happy, at least,”_ she mused as she navigated the SUV down the narrow driveway into the complex.

While she spent most of her nights and weekends there, May was still more at home organizing operations or teaching combat tactics to new recruits than she was with calming temper-tantrums or trying to convince a teenager with pyrokinesis not to set fire to the drapes in her bedroom. Coulson had the bottomless well of patience and sympathy that was required for that kind of thing and she was happy to leave him to it.

She wondered sometimes if it was enough for him though.

May walked up the stairs to Coulson’s private apartment and was greeted by a sight that would have made a more sentimental person tear up (or at least snap half a dozen pictures.)

Coulson was reclined on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, snoring softly. Curled up on his right side, looking significantly less imposing than she did in the morning briefings, was Daisy, who was snoring like a lumberjack. FitzSimmons’ seven-month-old daughter, Annie, slept peacefully on Coulson’s chest, apparently unperturbed by the industrial-accident calibre sound of Daisy’s breathing.

May allowed herself the indulgence of enjoying the moment for about ten seconds before clearing her throat.

Daisy jerked awake like a shot had gone off and Coulson stared at her blankly for a moment before relaxing again.

“How is it that I got home from work _after_ the Director of SHIELD?” May asked Daisy.

“Because you’re a workaholic,” Daisy returned with a yawn. “And I have to be back at the new base in an hour. Yo-Yo and Mack’s Tact team is reporting in.”

May grimaced sympathetically and perched on the side of the couch.

“What are you doing here, Annie?” She asked softly, stroking the baby’s cheek with a brush of her finger.

“Remember we told FitzSimmons we’d take her for the week?” Coulson reminded her. “Extra-delayed honeymoon? Seychelles?”

“Right. Of course.”

She did remember. It was just a crazy time. Everything seemed to blur together. But she was happy to have the little girl around, and gods knew FitzSimmons deserved a week off. Or a month.

“We tried to wait up for you,” Coulson said quietly. “She just got sleepy.”

“And you didn’t put her to bed because…?”

“She was comfortable here,” Coulson demurred.

May’s mouth twitched, but she wisely said nothing. Every time they watched Annie, getting Coulson to put her down or hand her to someone else was like negotiating a hostage situation. She had learned that it was better to let it go and wait until his arms got too sore to lift her before trying to have any one-on-one time with the girl herself.

Something buzzed from Daisy’s jacket pocket. She wrenched out her mobile and scanned the text with a groan.

“Great,” she said. “Mack and Yo-Yo are thirty minutes out. Looks like it’s back to work.”

May and Coulson murmured their sympathies as Daisy unfolded herself, stretched, and got ready to head back to the base.

“You’re staying the weekend, right?” Coulson asked.

“That depends,” Daisy said. “You trying to stick me with diaper duty?”

“No,” Coulson replied just as May answered, “Maybe.”

Daisy grinned and shook her head.

“I’ll be here,” she promised.

She kissed Coulson and Annie on the forehead and gave May a quick side-hug before leaving.

May sighed and settled into the warm space that Daisy had occupied beside Coulson.

She stroked Annie’s chubby forearm and felt herself relax, feeling the rise and fall of Coulson’s chest against her.

It was times like these when she could almost forget the lingering guilt over the role she had played in bringing him back.

Those first few months had been torture for both of them. When the members of the team came to visit him when he was in memory-rehab, May was always the last of the day. She would come to his suite in the evening, wearing leggings and oversized tee shirts, her hair still damp from the shower.

After a quick exchange about the events of the day, May would tell him a story from their past. She told him short recollections from their time in Field Ops and long narratives from their adventures after the fall of SHIELD. She never asked him if he remembered what she was describing, she just told him the story of his life, night after night, as weeks turned into months.

On his good days, Coulson would follow along and ask questions, occasionally making notes in the journal he kept by his bed. When the days had been particularly long and he believed he was not making any progress, he would tune her out completely. She could feel his mounting frustration.

Every night, she left his room doubting herself. She doubted her ability to remind him of the person that he used to be. She doubted if he would even want her to keep to her promise, had he known what the future held for him. She even doubted whether or not she should have intervened at all when he told the team that it was his time to go. Maybe his instincts had been right. Maybe he was suffering now because they were all too damn selfish.

After weeks of mounting tension, he finally demanded that she give up on him.

“God, May,” he had yelled. “Why are you doing this? Aren’t you sick of this? Doing this every night? There’s got to be something else you’d rather be doing. Aren’t you sick of me? _I’m_ sick of me. I’m sick of hearing about all of the things I did and everything I can’t remember! What is it going to take for you to give up and move on with your life?”

As much as it had stung, there was nothing she could tell him but the truth.

“I can’t,” she replied.

“Why not?”

May supposed that she could have told him that it was because she had made him a promise, but it was too easy and it was not the whole story. They had both lost everything else, the least she could give him was an honest answer.

“Because I love you,” she said.

It was amazing how easy the words came after years of dreading the consequences of such an admission.

“I loved who you were and I love you now, because you’d still rather push everyone away than cause anyone a moment’s inconvenience trying to help you. Even if you never remember another thing about who you are, I don’t care. I still love you."

"And I’m not going anywhere.”

But he did remember.

Maybe it was because the pressure abated, knowing that his lack of total recall was not going to drive her away. Or maybe it was because she stopped trying so hard to make him remember. But it came back to him. Over weeks and months.

And she began to hope that her role in convincing him to stay was not something she had to regret.

The guilt that kept her up at night began to abate. Every day, it diminished a little more as he began to return to his old self and find happiness in the people and situation that had been once been a source of frustration.

It was those small moments that gave her the most reason to hope that things might be alright.

When he began to bicker with her and finish her thoughts again. When Daisy walked out of his room, practically skipping, rather than slumped over in dejection. When he sat perfectly still, mesmerized, as he held Annie for the first time

The night that he told May that he loved her and asked her not to leave

Now, there seemed no reason for her to have any doubts at all.

Coulson had found a new niche supervising the kids downstairs, giving them the care, support, and sometimes kick in the ass they needed, before seeing them settled with families that could care for them. He still came by the SHIELD base and members of the team were in and out of the complex contently.

Daisy stayed with them most weekends.

They watched over Annie whenever Fitz and Simmons were needed in the field.

He had every reason to be happy. They both did.

But May was still nervous. Perhaps it was because everything she ever had that was good never lasted long enough. Or maybe it was because today was the one-year anniversary of the day that he died for the second time.

“You gonna tell me what’s bothering you?” Coulson mumbled against her shoulder.

May snorted softly.

“You think you know all of my tells,” she said.

“More than you’d like me to,” he replied, sitting up to face her.

May did not answer. There was no point in spoiling the moment.

“If I didn’t have a baby asleep on me, you know I’d find a way to make you talk,” Coulson needled. “You don’t really want me to wake Annie, do you?”

Damned if he wasn’t the only one who could make her smile when she felt like doing anything but.

“Still think you got game, don’t you?”

“Shyeah,” he said with a smirk.

May sighed.

“Are you happy?” She asked.

“You mean, here? With you?”

“With me,” she answered. “With the team. With the last year. With… still being here. When you were—do you regret it? Do you regret taking the drug?”

“No,” he said, all traces of teasing gone. “I don’t regret it.”

“You were right. You were all right. There were some things I hadn’t figured out yet, some of the most important things of my life. And if you are feeling guilty at all, you have to stop.”

May looked down at her hands. He really did know her more than she gave him credit for.

“You guys didn’t just give me a reason not to die. Everyone on the team gave me a reason to live,” he said. “But _you_ gave me the strength. And a reason to want to.”

“What reason was that?”

Coulson’s smile was tinged with sadness that reached his eyes. She knew that look. It was one she had seen him wear after talking to Daisy on those rare occasions when he realized how little she understood how important she was to him.

“This,” he said simply. “Right here. A future with you.”

“You really wanted this with me? That much?”

He nodded and leaned over. His lips brushed the shell of her ear.

“Always,” he whispered. “I just never thought I’d have the chance.”

May covered his mouth with her own. When she closed her eyes, tears ran down her cheeks, but for once, she did not care.

“Thank you, May,” he said, when they parted. “Thank you for giving me one more chance.”

The throbbing in her throat stole her voice, so all she could do was nod.

For the first time since this whole thing began, she did not have a single regret. If she had to do it all over, she would not change a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and for all your comments and kudos!  
> Let me know what you thought about how this wrapped up!


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